Abstraction

High among my (many, many) pet peeves is the bathroom hand-dryer, the wall mounted device that blows a sad little bleat of warm air on your hands, forcing you to either stand around and repeatedly cycle the machine or just give up and smear your hands all over the front of your pants.

Now, reminding me that the potential for a great product is often right in front of you, comes a better hand dryer.

It dries with a slim jet of air moving at 400 miles per hour. The Airblade doesn’t heat the air, so it uses about 80% less electricity than conventional machines. The dryers, which will be launched in the U.S. on June 26, are getting rave reviews from early customers. “Everybody loves them,” says George Denise, general manager for property manager Cushman & Wakefield at Adobe Systems Inc.’s buildings in San Jose, Calif. “They’re high-tech. They’re unique. They work well. And I’d even go so far as to say they’re fun.”

That great products ideas are everywhere, if you only know where to look, reminds me of an aphorism — there is, right now, a tiny company (or just an idea for a company) destined to grow into a billion dollar monster. If you missed your chance as an early employee at Google (or wherever), don’t sweat it; the next Google (or Oracle, or YouTube, or whatever) exists today, right now, somewhere. All you have to do is find it. They’ll hire you, no problem. Also, once you find it, you have to stick with it even when everything is going to hell and you’re sure it’s going to be a miserable failure. Easy, right?